Nisa Donnelly: The cat who came home for Christmas

The Motorola console TV was sending yet another grainy black-and-white Christmas tale into the living room, a strange greenish light leaking out through the windows onto the snow. It was the week before Christmas and the TV families were enjoying small holiday miracles in their perfect 1950s world of glowing houses on shimmering streets in Southern California. It would be a lot of years before I understood that life with the Cleavers wasn't reality TV, and decades to accept that stark truth. "My family wasn't like those on TV when I was growing up," I confided to a therapist. "Nobody's was; believe me." So it goes.

Teetering on the brink of admitting that I no longer believed in Santa, I was running the risk that the special present addressed to me and signed "Santa" in my dad's distinctive cursive would evaporate with any admission of skepticism. That year, though, I was hedging bets for another reason. All I wanted for Christmas was a gray cat named Tommy. I'd mentioned it every few days since Thanksgiving, or to be more accurate since the day after Thanksgiving when the first Christmas-miracle TV extravaganza had aired.

"How about a kitten?" My mother was hopeful. "Gray," interjected my father. Kittens, even a gray one, probably could be found even in the middle of winter in the middle of Illinois, if you tried hard enough and luck was with you. Or at least I now imagine that was what they must have been thinking. I shook my head. "Tommy wouldn't like that." Tommy, my gray cat, had gone missing months earlier — hit by a car or maybe poisoned, my parents likely imagined, but definitely not coming back. "He'll be home for Christmas, you know," I assured my parents, with a confidence I didn't feel. The way I had it figured, if Santa or the Christmas angel or whoever was in charge of Christmas miracles at our house that year detected so much as a hint of doubt, there would be no miracle and certainly no cat named Tommy coming home for Christmas.

I don't remember the gifts that year. Family photos show dolls and picture books, sweaters and my mother hiding her face with her hands, laughing. I do remember going first to the front door then to the window where Tommy always came to scratch to come inside. Nothing but a few bird tracks in the untouched snow.

We were halfway through breakfast when I heard a familiar sound. Pushing back from the table, I rushed the door: "It's Tommy!" Shoving hard against the storm door frozen in the jamb, I felt my dad pull back on the door and then slam the top with his open palm. It creaked open and Tommy, plump and sleek strolled through, delicately shaking each paw to rid it from the frost, meowing loudly, apparently indignant at having been forced to wait.

Years later I would learn that cats often have multiple families. Tommy obviously had chosen to live with another, possibly because my dad's Labrador retrievers were too often willing to expand their workouts to include a bit of cat chasing. My mother, a wise woman who nonetheless accepted small miracles whenever they presented themselves, suspected that this one wouldn't last much longer than the dying fir tree, which was already shedding needles on the floor. She got down a saucer, filled it with milk and a bit of leftover breakfast egg and bacon bits. I sat on the floor next to the cat, petting his soft, supple fur as he ate, listening to him purr loudly as was his way.

"He probably can't stay," my mother observed. She meant "won't." I nodded, swallowing a growing knot of tears. Deep down, I knew it was true. Tommy would be gone by the next afternoon; I never saw him again. And in a way it really was OK.

Decades of Christmases have passed, some memorable, many not. My personal gifts from Santa lasted as long as my dad. I waited for other small miracles, but only one padded across the floor in the shape of an ordinary gray cat named Tommy, the cat who came home for Christmas.